Stalker Photos......Should I Be Worried??

They start out so innocent.....and by the end you are wondering.....

 WHO TOOK THESE??

Nana's Science Fair Project

"An Ode To Mold"

By Savannah Dorband

Can you believe I let this stuff stink up my bread/cereal cupboard for a month? I must REALLY love this kid ;)   She did get an A on her project though......

Random Acts of Studlyness

There isn't much else in this world that is as attractive to a woman as a man carrying around heavy furniture like it weighs nothing......

Unless it's the little man telling you he needs to go potty, and then ACTUALLY GOING POTTY, thus signalling the nearness of the end of the diaper era.....

Lets hope he's still interested this summer.......

A Little More Recently.....

When I first made curtains for my room and the boys room, I had never done it before, and therefore didn't know all the tricks that I know now. Which means that I didn't wash and iron the material before I sewed it together, and so the first time I did wash the finished curtains, they bunched all funny and shrank. So three panels for my windows weren't wide enough to keep the cold out, and the two singles I made for the boys two windows weren't doing their job either. I decided to remake the curtains in the boys room first. Since they have the coldest room in the house besides me, I figured they needed it more than I did. I bought some extra flannel and pieced together the old material with the new material to make 2 new bigger curtains.....and of course, they are reversible......

Little did I know that I would be switching the kids into each others rooms in just a few months, and that one of the curtains I had just remade for the boys room would become obsolete...(meaning that I will rip it apart and use the material for something else....I will post pictures of the room switch and the new curtains for the girls room when they are done.......)

Meanwhile, back at the sewing table......I needed another curtain for my room too which I finally got around to making. This is the finished product. It's the brown one on this end....see how straight it is compared to the others? The others bug me now that I see them next to the nice one so, maybe I'll rip them up and redo them at some point also....

I have a thing for frogs......fortunately for me, Tom thinks it's cute.....all my curtains are froggies....on both sides.....

This is the other side.......I'll flip them over in the spring......

Plastic Floors: The Final Episode....or is it?

We got the living room floors done a couple of weeks before Thanksgiving. We weren't as lucky with wood as we were when we got wood off Craigslist for the kids rooms......we went with cheap Ikea wood this time, but only got 3 rows installed before we decided that it was crappy enough to want to return it and purchase new wood. We got cheap Home Depot wood the second time, but that was pretty crappy too. We improvised, with extra time and lots of wood glue, but it took 8 times as long as it should have. We also had problems with what to do with our not so working fireplace. Do we spend $150 on tile to make it look good and then another $1500 to get it working, with the risk of needing to spend that much to fix it again in a few years? Or, do we rip it out and get a woodburning stove installed for $1500 which can heat the house if the power is out? (We opted to not tile the fireplace now, we are going to rip it out at a later date and put in a woodburning stove.)
When we cleared out the living room to do the floors, we got rid of our ancient couches (which Tom has hated for years cuz they are way rickety), and got new ones. (Ok, one of them is really a futon). With my mom working at the temple every week overnight we thought it would be nice to have a real place for her to sleep when she visits us, so we sprung for the sofa bed option. We also got a new entertainment center kind of unexpectedly cuz the one I've been wanting was in the scratched and dented room looking like new but with a very nice discount :D
Unfortunately our old TV didn't quite fit on top of it, as it was lacking 1-2 inches in depth that our other one had.....it fit but it was very unstable. Tom's solution: 'Hey, I've been wanting a flatscreen anyway'......we got an awesome deal at Costco and now hubby is happy. It's nice when you can spend a little of his money on something that makes him happy.....I mean I'm sure he enjoys having a roof and heat but, lets face it, it's just not as cool as a giant flatscreen TV.

 The fireplace and the floor.....we also got new vent covers....ones that don't break when someone steps on them.......

 The couch...unassembled.....and the rest of the floor.......

 Our new living room......the computer end.......

 The uber long strip that took someone hours to get perfectly straight.....Thanks, Termain :)

 James, exploring his new environment.......and no, it is not unusual to find him doing stuff like this.......

 Yes, he IS using his teeth to help get himself down......

 He LOVES the new TV......he is a man after all......except for the part where some of his favorite shows are 'I Love Lucy' and 'Bewitched'.......I guess Buzz Lightyear is pretty manly too....for a doll......

 See the patch of blue carpet under the door in my room? Yeah, thats the next floor to be done.....sometime in 2013.....

Another awesome feat of carpentery....seriously Termain, we couldn't have done it without you :)

Plastic Floors: Part 2

I finished installing the floors in the girls room in October.....and we moved James out of our closet and into their room while we were at it. We were at the point where he would sleep through the night in the closet, and we thought since he was spending more time in the kids rooms that maybe he would like to sleep with them. Unfortunately there wasn't enough room in the boys room for him without buying space saving furniture, so he ended up with the girls.

Before......

After!

James' new bedroom :)

Fish Face (old post from september)

I left my kids home by themselves the other night, and made them promise not to watch TV. They kept their promise. This is what they did instead.....
I only found one video, but apparently they dared each other to eat the dehydrated anchovies that I feed to the turtles. Don't worry, I bought them at the Asian market, they are actually for human consumption. I tried to upload the video, but after loading all night it still wasn't done and I gave up. But trust me, it was HILARIOUS!

How I Spent My Summer Vacation: Part 1

We went to Gettysburg in June......my aunt came to visit in June too.....she stayed with us until the end of October......we showed her the sights.......

 We ate at our favorite cheese steak place...mmmm....

 We walked around the cemetery.....again.....it never gets old.....all those cannons and unknown graves....

 The view from the observation tower was awesome......and one of the only pictures I have of Calvin this year......

We went to the aquarium in June too.....Jack LOVES the sharks.....We love the aquarium, and we always get season passes....if we go twice in 15 months it's paid for itself......

Apparently I was angry.....James enjoyed talking about how sharks bite you......

Rayzel had her picture taken 3 times, but somehow we didn't get any pictures of anybody else....

The girls planned an Achievement Days awards lunch in June too.....they both got lots of awards for accomplishing their Faith in God goals......

We foolishly attempted a backpacking trip Memorial Day weekend.....this is the only picture taken...Thanks, Calvin! Turns out that our family is too high maintenance at the moment for a real backpacking expedition....we'll try again when everyone is potty trained and can carry their own stuff.....but it was a beautiful hike :)

Ring in the old instead of the new, cuz I didn't get around to posting it.....

 Happy New Year from all of us! Here is the first installment of backlogged posts from 2010. Birthdays all around!

 Rayzel turned 10, and I made her some very cute cupcakes for her birthday, which she loved even more than the keyboard I got her :)

 Jack turned 6 and got Star Wars stuff....he's very into violence right now.....I can't remember if I made him a cake or not.....I probably did......I hope....we also got him a very nice Mongoose bike, which promptly got stolen, but Dad replaced it with a nice one from Goodwill cuz he was so upset about it.......

This is where Savannah's birthday pics would be if I had any. I regret to say that I have no idea if I made her a cake either, although, I know I gave her a camera for her birthday which she got early so she could take it on a field trip for school........Nana, I promise I will do better this year, and if it makes you feel any better, nobody made me a cake either. Just think of it as preparation for motherhood ;)

 

James turned 2 this year. He was really excited about the Woody and Bullseye toys, and then he saw the M&M's.......

 He was distracted from the M&M's by a loving older sister and cousin, who helped him use his new bubbles.....thanks, Nana and Melissa :D

 He had a frostingless cupcake on his actual birthday. Chocolate of course.


Calvin is last but not least.....he got a mummy sleeping bag for sub-zero temperatures for his birthday.....he's always cold, especially when he camps, and he does a lot of camping in boy scouts.......and yes, somehow I remembered to get a picture of his cake.....I'm not a total slacker.....

He also got an mp3 player from Grandma............